Well-Known Anti-Gay “Conversion” Therapist Comes Out As Gay

David Matheson spent years trying to help gay men be less gay. Now he is looking for a male partner himself.

David Matheson spent years speaking out against homosexuality and championing gay conversion therapy as a viable option to make men “whole”.

But it turns out that for all of Matheson’s insistence that his therapy can work, he is giving up the straight life himself. Friendly Atheist reported that the Mormon therapist has left hope of conversion behind and is on hunt for a suitable male partner.

Wayne Besen at Truth Wins Out made the initial announcement:

TWO contacted Matheson on Sunday evening and he provided a statement that was surprisingly unrepentant and failed to apologize for the grave harm he has caused many of his clients.

“My time in a straight marriage and in the “ex-gay” world was genuine and sincere and a rich blessing to me. I remember most of it with fondness and gratitude for the joy and growth it caused in me and many others. But I had stopped growing and was starting to die. So I’ve embarked on a new life-giving path that has already started a whole new growth process. I wasn’t faking it all those years. I’m not renouncing my past work or my LDS faith. And I’m not condemning mixed-orientation marriages. I continue to support the rights of individuals to choose how they will respond to their sexual attractions and identity. With that freedom, I am now choosing to pursue life as a gay man.”

But during those years of work Matheson failed to renounce, he spent countless hours trying to help men “reduce homosexual desires” and become “more comfortable in their masculinity”, according to a 2007 New York Times report.

The emphasis in Mr. Matheson’s counseling is on helping men — all his clients are male — develop “gender wholeness” by addressing emotional issues and building healthy connections with other men. He said he believed that helped reduce homosexual desires.

“The therapy I do really just uses standard, normal therapeutic principles,” he said. “Cognitive therapy and emotion-based therapy, standard therapeutic approaches, with an emphasis on helping them feel more comfortable in their masculinity.”

Friendly Atheist was less than impressed with Matheson’s revelation:

So he gets to escape his bubble and live how he wants while the men he convinced were broken have to live with the consequences of his faith-based brainwashing.

No asking for forgiveness. No acceptance of the fact that you can’t un-gay someone. No rejection of the very methods he now knows don’t work. Just a private announcement that only became public after Besen heard about it.